


honey, run for the hills

by cinderfell



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Masks, Self-Esteem Issues, Shapeshifting, crladiesweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 12:59:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10742193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinderfell/pseuds/cinderfell
Summary: She is ever-changing, wearing different forms like robes to hide what lies beneath it all.





	honey, run for the hills

**Author's Note:**

> title borrowed from "jackrabbit" by san fermin, which is an unnervingly perfect song for keyleth.
> 
> day three of critical role ladies week! keyleth!

There’s power in a change of shapes, a freedom unlike anything she’s ever known.  


It starts at her fingers, soot-black at the tips where the magic has permanently stained her. It sparks and smokes, dark tendrils curling up around her as the smell of a forest fire surrounds her form. Her hair billows back behind her as the fire consumes her body, the familiar red almost seeming to spread across every inch of her as her form shifts, tall and wiry frame twisting into a writhing flame as every inch of her ignites.

(There is a deep anger inside of her, something simmering beneath the surface of the soft and awkward woman. A burning disappointment in the way the world has let itself become, or perhaps anger at the possibility that the world has always been this way. When she becomes the mass of fire and smoke and untempered _force_ , she feels more at home in her own skin than… well, than her own skin.)

While the elemental is fire and brimstone and acceptance of what she’s always buried, she’s dark and powerful as the big cat, a mass of lean muscle and sharp teeth, a different kind of dangerous. Fire is an ancient fear, and the claws and fangs of a beast that knows how to keep to the shadows is even older. The cat is a favorite form of the group’s (and of hers, too, if she’s honest), enough so that the shape had earned its own name at some point. She’s something else entirely as Minxie.

She likes it.

She rips through their enemies like they’re made of paper, claws or fangs often working better than any spell. She finds that the very sight of Minxie can sometimes end a fight before it even begins-- people rarely wanted to tangle with a beast as wild and feral looking as her.

Grog’s fingers scratch through her fur, firm yet gentle after she does something particularly ferocious or impressive. A purr rises from her throat and she rubs against his leg, tail curling around him as he lavishes her with affection. There’s an underlying current of fondness in the way he touches and speaks to the cat that’s not present anywhere else between the two of them, at least not in the same way. This is not Grog and Keyleth, but Grog and Minxie.

Later he laughs, pulling a twig from her normal body’s hair as the party walks. His fingers scrape across her scalp slightly as he pulls the intruding object away, sending a shiver down her spine at the familiar feeling. For a moment the line between Keyleth and the big cat blurs, moving reflexively as she butts her head up against his retreating hand, earning her a confused look from the goliath.

“What are you doing?” He looks down at her, brows pulled together.

She comes back to herself almost as quickly as she let herself slip, fully Keyleth yet again. Keyleth the awkward half-elf, Keyleth whose interactions with Grog usually end in her making a fool of herself. “Uh, nothing.”

After a moment of silence Grog shrugs, flicking the twig dismissively to the forest floor before moving up by Scanlan, who greets the large man with a friendly slap on the leg before they slip into conversation.

Keyleth falls back by Percy.

He raises an eyebrow at her, wordlessly questioning the look on her face.

She simply shakes her head.

Percy bumps his shoulder into hers in what she can only imagine is meant to be a quiet reassurance, albeit a bit of an awkward one as he’s never been very good at them. However, she can’t help the tiny smile that creeps up across her face at the little attempt, however brief and clumsy.

Percy often pulls away from the touch of others. It’s just the way he was raised, he says. He never pulls away from Keyleth.

She sits close to him in the Whitestone library, their arms and sides pressed together as the sit on the floor, surrounding by piles and piles of books.

“Why do you wear that mask, Percy?” she asks softly, eyeing the terrible beaked thing in question over on the table where he set it alongside her circlet.

“Honestly?” His voice is low, barely audible as he speaks. “I’m not entirely fond of who I am, Keyleth. I wear it because I’m much less of myself when I wear it, and much more of something else.”

Ah. If _that_ isn’t familiar...

Her gaze drops down to the book open on her lap, eyes tracing the lines but not registering the words themselves. “It sounds like you’re running from yourself.”

“I’m not the only one in Vox Machina that wears a mask because they don’t like who they are underneath. I just happen to be only one who takes it literally.” He sounds very tired as he slowly closes his own book. “It can help you cope. Masks are useful that way, regardless of whether they’re literally masks or something else.”

If she didn’t know him the way that she does, she may have dismissed the almost knowing look he shoots her as he says it, the way it makes the hairs stand up on her arms even just from seeing it out of the corner of her eye. Sometimes Percy is too keen for her liking, especially when it came to her. Perhaps it’s simply because she’s an open book, as easy to read as the ones in front of them now, but she knows that the strange human that has become her best friend in recent years understands her in a way few others do. They sit there quietly for a moment, her still pretending to read and him just… looking at her.

A gentle squeeze of her arm makes her jump, her eyes flying up to meet his at the unexpected contact. Percy doesn’t pull away from her when she touches him, true, but it’s still rare for him to initiate any affectionate gesture, even as simple as this.

There’s something almost endearingly awkward about the way he reaches out to her, she thinks.

Quite a pair they make, masks and all.

Keyleth is tall and lean, too tall for her own tastes. Too lean. Her legs are almost knobby to her, twiglike and fragile-looking. She doesn’t want to be fragile. She doesn’t want to be a newborn creature stumbling through life on too-long legs that she hasn’t figured out how to use yet. She wants to allow herself her anger without guilt, wants to be a graceful and dangerous creature. She wants to be both without sacrificing who she is, even if she doesn’t like who she is very much.

Keyleth is clumsy and awkward with a heart and a soul too big for her own body but gods, she is trying.  



End file.
